Oh! How did I miss that thread? Thank you, I'll check it out!

I would love to see a list of essay prompts that you've seen on your college applications. Back when I applied to college, I only ever had to write one essay which I typed over and over again (on a typewriter!) for each paper application. From what I hear one essay is not the norm these days. It would be nice to be able to mull over some of these prompts over the next couple of years before applications out to be written. So what have your applicants been asked to write about? And how much space/how many words are allowed? Thanks!

Stay far, far away from the west side of the city: Sunset and Richmond districts. Fog, clouds, depressing. Do you already have housing lined up? I've heard it is very very expensive these days.

Check back next year and let us know how it goes. Happy holidays!

This is quite true of my essay. I filled a niche they didn't know they had.

This depends on your dc the applicant. Essays can sometimes be very personal, and your dc may not want to share openly. However, given that you appear to have little personal experience with competitive admissions, I would find someone who does and ask them to read it. I would encourage you to find as many people as possible actually. Ask them to mark it up with suggestions. Then your dc can decide whether to incorporate them based on the credibility of the reviewer and what your dc wants to communicate. Back in another era (1980s) I did not have anyone look at my essay and I was admitted to a top 5 college. It was a pretty good essay. But for med school, I had several people read my personal statement, and boy am I glad I did. I just didn't appreciate how my words would appear to physicians academics. Rewriting my essay helped me gain admission to a top 5 med school. So, yes, I'm in favor of getting feedback when possible.

If the students want to learn Minecraft or Java or Scratch, it's just plain easier to do that on a regular computer. I wouldn't begin Raspberry Pi until they have some python programming under their belt. The neat thing about RasPi is you can write python programs to control things in the "real world" like a lamp or coffee maker. We created a website that you can access with your phone to turn on and off a lamp in the living room. Completely useless for us, but still kind of cool. Check out my post on Arduino and Raspberry Pi and electronics in general for more info.

It's excellent that you are planning ahead. Planning is essential to homeschooling, but you don't want to get ahead of yourself. Think first about your first year of homeschooling. What subjects, what curricula, what textbooks and materials, what outside classes, online classes or tutors do you need to have lined up? When you have year 1 squared away, then you can start thinking about year 2. Having said that, if high school is stressing you out, subscribe to the hs2coll yahoogroup and lurk for a good long while. Like years. Listen in on other people's conversations, the good, the bad, and the ugly about college admissions. I guarantee the AP vs. CC conversation will be repeated there as well as on this board. By the time your kids are in 8th grade you'll be all set. Then you can start asking questions. Good luck!

The only way ethics are involved is in following their rules and not being dishonest with them. It sounds like you have no reason to be dishonest. I would do as others have suggested and call to clarify any deadlines, get it in writing or email and then take as much time you need to make a decision within their deadline. And congratulations to your son!

Just FYI, in case you were reading my post on that thread, my dd taking WTM bio is in 7th grade and is obsessive about her grade in that class and devotes way more time than I want her to. But I think that's related to her maturity, her agonizing over every lost point, etc. We're working on that. It'll likely be different for an older kid who can do a better job of balancing classes, and doing just "good enough" to get a good grade. Having said that, for my 9th grade student, I also feel like I've lost control of high school, and she's spending so much time on her core classes, she doesn't have time for her (and my) other goals for her. I will say that we pay short shrift to history. We still do history, but at a really low workload. I'm hoping that when her AoPS class ends this January, that will free up some time to do some other things like competition math prep and electronics. Also, I feel sad that she elected not to audition for the winter show this year because she feels she's too busy. And one big reason we homeschool is so she could have time for things like theater. Regarding your point about pushing detailed knowledge down to high school level. My point of view is that I came into college with my less exposure to certain topics than my colleagues. I hadn't taken AP chemistry and was thrashed in my introductory chemistry class. I hadn't been playing with Radio Shack electronics kits my whole life like my male engineering colleagues, so didn't know a breadboard from...the other kind of breadboard. I don't want my kids to have that experience, which drives me to make them as prepared as possible.

Thank you for mentioning the increased workload in high school, because I also feel like I've lost a bit of control because their classes are all so time consuming. I was wondering if I had made a mistake somewhere, because before this the kids all had loads of time for extracurriculars or whatever struck their fancy.

I don't have personal experience to offer, but I believe Cal Newport recommends that your student work with a professor on a research project of some sort, even if s/he doesn't plan to go into academia. Professors often hear about job openings and will recommend a student they know well.

Favorite: Mr. Moskaluk, AP Chemistry with PA Homeschoolers.

Those of use who enjoy posting and solving math problems on these boards, would be grateful to have some sort of math notation available to us. Something that will automatically format fractions and exponents would be fabulous and make math problems so much easier to read! Just throwing that out there.

I'm very impressed that you strive to teach your student to learn, rather than just solving it for him. Bravo! My math teacher always said, "Mere memorization is a mathematical malpractice." You have good instincts to focus on figuring things out (aka deriving them) rather than pure memorization. Excellent! You are using correct typewriter notation for exponents: ^ I have a mind to ask the moderator/admin to add math notation to these boards. (You can also use superscript font, but who has time for that?) I agree with Arcadia to re-read the chapter, or at least review the main points in the boxes or end of chapter summary. There are 2 steps to understand with respect to exponents: factoring and division. Begin with simpler examples: Factoring: Show him something like this: 3^2 + 3^3 + 3^4 and ask him what is the common factor that can be factored from those 3 terms. Hopefully he will see that the expression can be rewritten as 3^2 ( 1 + 3^1 + 3^2). Repeat as needed with different bases and exponents, bases as variables (x^3 + x^18 + x^27) = x^3*(1+x^15 + x^24) and exponents as variables 3^x + 3^2x + 3^(x+7) = 3^x*(1 + 3^x + 3^7) Division: Ask him to simplify something like this: ( 3^5) / (3^2) to make sure he understands how to divide exponents. This is how I teach Socratically, by beginning with first principles and hoping to stimulate the insight needed to solve the more difficult problem. HTH.

I have not actually used this book, but it's been sitting on my bookshelf for years. It looks very interesting, though. Ilustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments.

What??? This is a thing? How did I miss hearing about something that is so obviously awesome?

Like, like, like. Thank you for reminding me to be more mindful.

Agreed. If he's doing it in his head, he probably gets it at some level. And he'll be reintroduced to the distributive property again in pre algebra. I vote for skipping it.

Here's a link to more electronics resources that I'm compiling.

Illustrated Guide to Home Biology Experiments devotes a lot of space to prepping slides and using stains.

Sometimes we use a calculator with AoPS just out of sheer disbelief. Like, have you ever solved a problem involving the sum of 2 different square roots, where you are taking the square root of the sum of an integer and a square root, but you solve it by squaring both sides, using some factoring techniques and ending up with an integer for an answer? It's fun to see the same integer result when you do it on a calculator.

My dd's didn't start using a calculator until MathCounts when a calculator is allowed on some exams (thought not always necessary). So I dug out my old HP, and taught them RPN, just to make calculator use easier, faster, and more efficient. I doubt my kids could have figured out how to use a calculator without being explicitly taught. (Back in the day, I needed to use the tutorial in the manual to understand how the registers work.) Checking with dd13 who just took the SAT a few days ago, she tells me she did use the RPN calculator quite a lot. We use AoPS, so other than for MathCounts practice (team round and target round), they don't use calculators. ETA: I ignored your subject heading. It turns out I still have my HP calculator manual, so we just went through the tutorial, as far as simple calculations go, how to store values in the registers, how to do multiple operations in what order. It was all very straightforward with the manual. I'm betting there's probably a website if you don't have a manual handy.

We've received our results a few days ago by email, but we took the exam on the first day and submitted the scantrons the same day.

When I have something important and possibly painful to say to one of the kids, I make an appointment and give them gist of the agenda so they can be at least a little prepared for the conversation. "On Wednesday at 4pm, we're going to sit down and discuss how to improve your productivity while drinking Christmas lattes at Starbucks." That way you won't blindside him about his work ethic out of the blue, and he feels a bit empowered going into the discussion. Make sure no siblings are around to respect his privacy. Also, you can do some guerilla warfare (another metaphor) by reading aloud to him a book by Cal Newport. Any of them are good, but you can start with this one.